Four Bears

It's been awhile since I posted charts from dshort.com.  Here is the Four Bad Bears graph:

And here is the Mega Bear Quartet (mentioned near the bottom of the linked entry; apparently not inflation-adjusted):

And here is the Real Mega Bears (an inflation-adjusted overlay of three secular bear markets):

Testing email alert for new blog post

Stephanie and Michael should receive an email about this new post.

Gratuitous Adam photo -- to test new editor features

Oooooooo.  Love the improved image-adding/moving features in the new editor.  Can change size and move L/R/Center easily, after initial upload (instead of having to make the decision at upload).

Update:  This is a fan photo that I actually have permission to post, except I'm supposed to give attribution and cannot find the name of the person.  So I'm taking it down unless/until I find it.  But the editor is FAB.

Testing new features in the new editor

There's a strikethrough feature: handy for snarky editorial comment.

There's a jump cut.  Follow me below the cut.

Recently read

If you like or even sort of like John Irving, I can recommend Last Night in Twisted River. If you have stayed away from Stephen King because it's "horror" or "supernature" and you don't do either, I can recommend Under the Dome, which is neither. It's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" meets "The Simpsons Movie" with some great characters.

As I was saying...

McCain/Palin in a squeaker, global warming is a fraud, Ayers wrote Barry's book, and ACORN is a corrupt organization.

Three out of four ain't bad.

The Emperor's Children

The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud, was excruciating painful for me and I never would have finished if it had not been a book club pick. For starters, a central character is a middle-aged male writer who's having an affair with friend of his daughter. What IS the fascination writers have with this character? He appears in roughly 50% of contemporary fiction and, as I've mentioned before, he's not remotely interesting to me. Typically, he's written by a male author and I always assume that the author is just indulging his own fantasy on my time, but this time it's a female author so I can't conjure a reason why this character needed to appear here. The rest of the characters were equally unappealing and uninteresting to me. I guess the novel operates on a metaphorical level exploring the meaning of authenticity, exposing pseudo-intellectualism, and considering the outsider experience. This is worthy territory. It made for a great book club discussion, though others generally disliked the book as much as I did.

It takes place in NYC and climaxes with 9/11, which is obviously not a coincidence. Spoiler alert: Awkwardness results from being at your girlfriend's apartment in Manhattan when you've told your wife you're giving a speech in Pittsburgh on the day terrorists strike causing all flights to be grounded and showing up at home reveals you weren't actually in Pittsburgh.

It was well-reviewed (e.g. NYTimes here) and was nominated for and won several awards, so I'm sure I've just failed to appreciate it to the extent it deserves.

Tiger on-line game

I know this is wrong...but oh so funny at the same time.

You have been invited back

You know who you are. I think I sent the invites correctly - if not, then I'll need instruction.And yes, the whole Adam Lambert/American Idol stuff bores me and I have absolutely no interest in it/him. The only subject that would bore me more is any discussion about "Twilight".

That being said, it's not an excuse for not posting about other things....such as the disaster that is the image of Tiger Woods.